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DiggJürgen Moltmann: The Life-Power of Hope
This article appears in the Eschatology issue of Trinity News , the magazine of Trinity Church-St. Paul's Chapel.
Some explore hope and others eschatology, but articulating the connection between the two has led many to call Jürgen Moltmann one of the world’s greatest living theologians. Trinity Institute director Robert Owens Scott visited Moltmann in Germany for a discussion.
Robert Owens Scott: If my 11-year-old son asked me what eschatology is, what could I tell him?
Jürgen Moltmann: Eschatology is the somewhat strange name for the life-power of hope. The life-power of hope is to stand up after defeat. We have in Germany this little stand-up man. If you knock him down from that side, he stands up. If you knock him from the other side, he stands up. If you suppress him for some time, he stands up. This is the power of hope, to stand up after defeat. This is the real freedom.
ROS: When I was a child, I asked my mother how the Bible says the world ends. She told me about Armageddon. With due respect to my mother, I’m not sure that was an adequate answer. What could I tell my children?
JM: Go on reading the Book of Revelation. Armageddon is mentioned only once in Chapter 16. If you come to the end, you come to the last great promise of God, “Behold I make all things new.” I am not convinced that Armageddon is of importance to the Book of Revelation. It is much more [about] going through persecution, through suffering. In the end, there is the outlook on the new creation of all things: “…and God will wipe away all the tears from their eyes and death will be no more.”
ROS: Why is eschatology more than simply speculation about how the world will end?
JM: Because eschatology is not only about the future but also about the presence of that future. If the future is a new creation and there is resurrection of the dead, then the presence is already filled with the resurrection hope [of] that life-power before death, which we experience in the spirit of resurrection. To be reborn to a living hope, as it is said in the New Testament, this gives us certainty that there is a resurrection after death. It is not speculation. It is not wishful thinking. It is about a power to stand up, here. It is certainly a prediction, but at the same time, as we can see in the Old Testament prophets, [it is] an affirmation of the present. God is coming, change your heart. It is not just speculation about the future, an extrapolation of the present or the past, but an anticipation of the coming of God. A calling to change the present. This is prophecy.
ROS: What is Kingdom of God theology to you?
JM: It’s the presence of God in all things and the presence of all things in God. In the Kingdom of God everything tastes divine and smells divine because the divine and the human, the heavenly and the earthly, are intertwined and interpenetrating. This is a great vision of the prophets of Israel and of the apostles.
I think this is necessary because then no part of life is separated from God. If you speak only about the salvation of the soul, then you neglect social salvation and the salvation of the earth. We have a lot of one-sided theology, and we need this holistic understanding of the Kingdom of God which is present everywhere.
ROS: How do you respond to those who see the Kingdom of God in the images found within Scripture as a vision of the world as the best it can be, rather than explicitly about any action of God?
JM: This is the wrong alternative. The unity of God the man is Christ. So Christ is the Kingdom of God in person already. And to follow Christ is to work for the Kingdom, to share in His messianic mission that brings the gospel to the poor and to heal the sick and liberate the oppressed. These are messianic works which we can do in the community with Christ. So this is beyond whether we must do everything or God must do everything.
ROS: In the traditional view of the Last Judgment some are saved and some are damned. Does that fit with your theological understanding?
JM: No, not at all. I think there are two streams in the New Testament. One is Mark and Matthew, and they have a view of an end with a double outcome of the saved and the condemned. And then there’s a universalism in the writings of the Apostle Paul that in the end, all the tongues will confess that Christ is the Lord to the glory of God the Father.
One must make a decision: to follow the one way or the other way. I think the final judgment has not so much to do with the good guys and the bad guys, but more with the victims and the perpetrators. In the final judgment, God will bring justice to the victims of violence and sin and terror, and transformation to the perpetrators. I think we have a great program ahead of us in theology to Christianize the idea of the final judgment.
ROS: Does faith create salvation or does salvation create faith?
JM: Salvation creates faith. The Savior is coming and our first response is in trust instead of anxiety and mistrust. And this I would call faith.
ROS: A bit more on the final judgment. You quote Christoph Blumhard as saying “Jesus can judge but not condemn.” That’s a strange image.
JM: I would interpret this statement that Jesus was coming to be the judge in the final judgment. It’s the same as the Jesus we know from history and that Jesus we know from history was not condemning the women who were brought to be stoned. And He said “I would not condemn you, too.” I think we must see that the Jesus of the final judgment is the same as the Jesus of Nazareth who died for us on the Cross.
ROS: Is there some dimension where religion draws its power from this fear of damnation now?
JM: Damnation is a power of death. Eternal death. The power of religion is life and the strength of life and love — not condemnation. We would be very close to terror in religion if we follow this line that damnation is necessary for religion.
ROS: The writer Roberta Bondi described the theology she grew up with as believe God loves you or he’ll send you to hell forever.
JM: Is this a loving God? Is this a question of a loving God? This is not even a question of a loving father or a mother to their own child: love me or go to hell. No father would say that. No mother would say that. And God should say that? I don’t believe that. He is faithful even if we don’t believe.
ROS: In your introduction to The Coming of God, you quote “the end is in the beginning.” What does that statement mean to you?
JM: It’s from T. S. Eliot. It means that in every end there is a new beginning hidden. If you search, the new beginning will find you. You must look for it and never give up.
ROS: Is time a predetermined plan?
JM:Well, if your [conference] title is correct that God’s future is unfinished, it cannot be a plan which is executed. And I think God is limiting His omnipotence and omniscience, to give his creatures freedom and to see what they are doing. And therefore, I don’t believe in a plan of God. He will react to what we are doing and I’m looking forward to seeing that. If there is a plan which is executed in world history, there can be no more miracle anymore.
Dr. Jürgen Moltmann is Emeritus Professor of Systematic Theology, University of Tubingen, Germany. Widely considered one of the most important theologians of the last fifty years, his landmark book Theology of Hope (1964) has been translated into many languages. His other books include The Crucified God (1972), God in Creation (1985), and The Coming of God (1995).
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